Ten Philosophical Mistakes

It would be hard to overstate how important this little book is. Adler won his fame as a popularizer of philosophic thought, unlike most in this highly stratified field. This book is certainly in the populist vein, being written with great clarity which only occasionally slips into tedium. That said, I need to add a disclaimer. This is not for the newcomer to philosophy. If you get to his first discussion of Hume and Kant and wonder “who are Hume and Kant?” it’s already too late. Nor does Adler re-write these 10 philosophical mistakes in the sense of correcting them, replacing them, and adding more ideas. That would have been far too ambitious.What he does do, in superlative fashion, is to zero in on a few fundamental errors. Astonishingly, these are not small errors, and he does not pull any punches. He takes on the giants of the field and some truly fundamental building blocks. These particular 10 instances, he feels, have sent modern philosophy down a number of blind alleys. It would be hard to disagree with him (though some have). This seems a good time to call attention to the many excellent reviews of Adler’s book on this Amazon site. Read them, and learn. This is not to say that I agree with all of the reviewers’ criticisms of Adler's approach and conclusions, see below.My approach will be to say a little about the first 4 chapters and why I found them valuable. 1. He tackles Locke’s assertion in the opening lines of his Essay that "ideas are the objects of men’s understanding." Nope (according to Adler). Ideas are not WHAT we think. Ideas are those things BY WHICH we think. Locke also lumps in too many things under that one term “ideas.” Adler borrows from Aristotle and Aquinas to correct Locke’s statement to something like: “men’s ideas are those things by which men bring memories, emotions, and concepts before their mind’s eye.” In that sense, the mind’s ideas are like muscles. We use them in order to see reality. Why does this matter? The importance has to do with the difference between public and private. If your imaginings and concepts are yours, and my imaginings and concepts are mine, and if these do not depend on an objective reality, and we are not able to share them, then how can we belong to a public world? The consequences are profound. Do we share the same reality? Not if our ideas are ours alone, and simply “copy” the reality that each of us sees.2. There is broad consensus among philosophers that everything we know comes through our senses. Even our reflections, as Locke said, depend on mulling over sense experience. The problem that Adler addresses is that in addition to sense, there is also intellect. The recognition of this intellect, in Adler’s view, was neglected during the Enlightenment. Among many errors, this has led to the persistent modern fallacy that humans and animals differ only in degree, not in kind. Think of this next time you're on Facebook and you see a photo of a “laughing” dog. Is the dog capable of conceptual thought?3. Adler explains how meanings get assigned to words and delves into “signs.” He concludes that our ideas do not have meaning nor do they acquire meaning. Rather our ideas ARE meaning. And that is all they are. He observes that words in a dictionary, unless they relate to our experience (or, unless a relation to something that we already know can be found), remain meaningless notations. Words do not direct thought. It’s the other way around: thoughts direct words. It’s only by everyday physical acquaintance with the reality around us that we can give meaning to words, and it is these words that are found in dictionaries. He reaches back into the Aristotelian tradition to reaffirm that the only things which can have meaning are those things which we can name; and the only things that we can name are those things that we understand. Things are named 1. to the extent that we understand them and 2. in the way that we understand them. In contrast, the modernist injunction: “don’t look for the meaning of the word, look for the use” is incoherent. Use depends on meaning.4. This chapter is about the difference between knowledge and opinion. His method is to carve out a tri-fold approach: 1. certain knowledge; 2. knowledge which is not certain but nevertheless arguably true based on a preponderance of the evidence; and 3. mere opinion, which can be true or false. The first category of truth based on certainty contains precious little. Even most scientific truth would not pass muster. As time goes on advances are made such that what we once thought to be rock-solid scientific evidence will get improved on. For example, Newtonian physics has been joined by accepted theories of relativity. Black holes, completely unknown and unaccountable for in past centuries, are now standard textbook topics.Within this tri-fold scheme, though, Adler has a lot to say about Positivism, and not much is good. The basic error he charges Enlightenment thinkers with is this: when they rightly began dismissing the superstitious and unfounded parts of Scholastic thinking, they forget that there was a considerable body of that thought not based on scripture or dogma which remained valid. Eighteenth-century philosophers thought that by junking traditional metaphysics and insisting on a new start with the “positive sciences” which were characterized by investigation (sciences such as history, geography and so on, and by the way that’s where the name “Positivism” comes from) they could start over with a blank page. That much was true, but what they forgot, according to Adler, is that not all truth is discoverable by investigation. He makes a strong case that everyday common sense is a form of knowledge. So too is moral philosophy. To go back to his tri-fold scheme, everyday common sense is not certain knowledge, but it is useful knowledge. For example, can we predict that the sun will come up tomorrow? Not with absolute certainly. But a sunrise tomorrow is certainly more probable than not. In this way, it qualifies as knowledge according to Adler, and I think he’s right.I hope that this explains a few of the reasons I found this book enlightening and extremely worthwhile. I will now mention that in some of the reviews here there are quibbles that science has moved on, that some of Adler’s objections have been answered, and that what Adler wrote is now in danger of being outdated. I suppose those things are possible. It was written, after all, in 1985. Yet in the absence of some proof for why Adler’s theories are wrong, and why so-called new thinking has replaced them, I believe I am justified in doubting. Don't forget, it was the "new thinking" of Kant, who tried to overcome Hume's skeptical conclusions, that led to the significant error of idealism which replaced realism, much to Adler's dismay. I would also point out that these specialist quibbles are exactly what Adler had in mind when he criticized the specialist Positivism in Chapter 4 vs. the everyday kind of common sense that he champions. Finally, in the new thinking department, it is all too easy to find much new thinking from self-appointed "thought leaders," above all on the internet, that is arguably superficial, sloppy, fallacious, and incoherent. Adler’s book has the opposite qualities. It is concise, well-grounded, rigorous, and rings true. Adler’s project here was to resurrect Aristotelian thinking in some areas where it had been neglected by Enlightenment, nineteenth century, and modern thinkers, and furthermore to demonstrate why he believes that Aristotle and Aquinas still have much to offer. I believe he has done just that.

Mortimer Adler is an excellent writer and thinker; he provides coherent and usually easy to understand explanations of important topics of day to day significance.

The paperback received is brand new. Am very pleased to find it and have it home delivered.

Although it is not advertised as such, this book can be thought of as an introduction to the metaphysics necessary to begin to understand Thomistic metaphysics. This is so because broadly speaking, this book argues against nominalism and for real essentialism. Knowing what the issues are and how nominalism has infected our thinking in nearly all walks of life in this day and age is very important to begin understanding a proper metaphysical worldview. This is simply THE best book there is for that. It is simple and readable, something anyone with no philosophical background whatsoever can pick up and read. Adler lays out the important issues carefully in an understandable way, and gives refutations of them. But again, in a very simple and common sense kind of way. I would recommend reading this book even before Feser. This book gives a more broad philisophical point of view than Feser. Do not underestimate Adler just because he was a "popularized" of philosophy. He does it right. He brings the ideas to the masses without compromising rigor and care. I give this book my highest recommendation.

Everything arrived on time and as advertised